I use a Kindle. It was a Christmas gift from my aunt-- device and pretty leather case.
I like that it's compact, lightweight, and because it's one of the originals, no distractions. My only complaint stems from when I was in graduate school-- it didn't display graphs and charts in my textbooks very well.

I don't write about where I grew up. The locations in my writing are influenced by the parts of Virginia and Ohio where I went to college, where my relatives lived, and where I live now, in Wisconsin.

Perhaps, as a result, few of my characters still live where they were born.

I love Tanith Lee's fairy tale collection, "Red as Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer" and thought of retelling some old favorites of my own. The tone of my book is a lot lighter, though.

I also took the opportunity to "correct" some fairy tale elements I disliked, such as in "Jack My Hedgehog", which I retold as "Weasel Rolf" and "The Glass Axe," which became "The Witch's Plain."

Being an author is a very difficult field to break into. I thought it would be easier to start out as an indie author and build up a portfolio, and, hopefully, a following, than to try to go to the big publishing houses cold.

It has given me a vehicle to publish and sell my stories and poetry, and I'm very glad to have that opportunity.

I love telling stories, and just the act of writing itself. I always have to write something, even if it's just a journal entry not meant for eyes other than my own.

But when it comes to writing for other people, if I can elicit a laugh or a shiver... that's very rewarding.

It's always different. For "In the Full Moonlight" I got the idea when I read about the rougarou on Reddit, and just started writing cold. One of the projects I'm still working on, "Born Dead," a vampire novel, also came from an Internet thread.

However, my fairy tales came from my love of the genre and were also inspired by a favorite author's take on the subject.

I'm still in the research stage of creating a fantasy world for a sword-and-sorcery novel. I love world-building, and that also plays into how I start my projects.

My next project is a vampire novel called "Born Dead."

I was inspired to write it after reading about the "coffin-baby" phenomenon, which is believed to have fed vampire legends around the world.

The book is set in rural Wisconsin during the 1930s, and draws on a number of vampire lore for its monster.

I love Tanith Lee, Raymond Chandler, Neil Gaiman, Tamora Pierce, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Nothing profound. I get out of bed because I need to eat, wash, make money, and take care of my home. I've never been a philosopher.

I like to cook, sew (particularly making clothes and teddy bears), embroider and knit. I also love to watch movies, particularly the classics, and listen to music.